Simmons leads meto a small room with a table and two chairs and gestures for me to have a seat. After sitting across from me, she sets a folder on the table.
I stare at it, bile rising in my throat as I imagine what images might be inside. Naomi’s body bruised, injured. Her eyes swollen shut, lips cracked and bloated. The room sways.
When Simmons speaks, her voice is gentle yet firm. “Margaret St. Clair has already identified the body.”The body.I shudder.
“We understand she was Naomi’s legal guardian prior to her eighteenth birthday, is that correct?”
I nod.
“There are just a few more things I’d like to go over with you. When was the last time you were in contact with your sister?”
“Um, I—I spoke to her yesterday…around ten that morning.” I fold my hands in my lap to try to get them to stop shaking as I remember our argument on the phone. “We just got in this afternoon. Naomi was—” The words get caught in my throat. “She was supposed to meet us at the Reunions tents, but she never showed…What happened?”
She clasps her hands on the table. “We received a call from a member of the rowing team this evening around six and recovered your sister’s body from the lake shortly thereafter. Given the circumstances, we requested an autopsy right away.”
I stare at her blankly, picturing my sister floating in the lake, the way I’d seen her float on her back in Margaret’s pool, and my chest aches, as if my heart has burst, the pain leaking into my arms, my legs. Then the water drains away, replaced by an image of Naomi lying on an autopsy table, and I feel myself struggling to hold on to consciousness.
The detective says my name again, and I drop my face to my palms. My forehead is slick with sweat. I can’t do this. “Can I get you some water?” she asks.
I concentrate on taking a deep breath, shake my headno,and after a moment, Simmons continues. She speaks slowly and carefully, the way people would sometimes speak to my mother. “The final autopsy results can take weeks, but the preliminary toxicology results show drugs and alcohol in her system as well as evidence of drowning.”
The room is pulsing with the beat of my heart.Drugs? Naomi never told me she did drugs…
“When we investigate a drowning, there can be contributingfactors. Impaired judgment, coordination…” Simmons opens the folder, slides it across the table.
It takes a moment for me to make sense of what I’m seeing, but after a moment my eyes focus on the first word:Benzodiazepines.Okay, Naomi did take medication. She had trouble sleeping. Maybe the detective meant they’d found prescription drugs in her system.
But when I reach the next line, I stop.Ketamine.
“Are you aware of any recent events that could be relevant to the investigation?” She hesitates. “Ms. Banks, how much did you know about your sister’s life?”
Chapter Three
Naomi
October 2022, seven months before her death
A dull throbbing headache creepsin like a drum, prodding me from sleep. I blink my eyes open as the bright morning light cuts through the blinds. My phone, thankfully, is on the nightstand, the screen smeared with glitter. 8:07. Shit. It’s past eight already?
Next to me, Liam is still asleep. Why does he look so hot with his arm over his head like that?Who sleeps like that?
As I take in my ex: his blond hair, tousled, his shirt off, I suddenlyremember his hands running down my back last night, his lips pressed against mine, and feel my whole body flush.
It was almost as if he were himself again—but no. He was just drunk. We’d hardly talked. This definitely wasn’t supposed to happen.
Trying to be quiet, I slip on my jeans and gather the rest of my things that are scattered around his room.Where is my shirt?
Liam’s phone vibrates on his desk. It’s a message from someone saved in his phone as Mollie Field Hockey.
I look away, trying to fight the urge to pick it up and throw it at him. We’re not together. I need to remember that. He can text whoever he wants now; last night doesn’t change that. We broke up last spring after his brother passed away unexpectedly earlier that year. It was horrible. Impossible to imagine losing a loved one like that, until I saw it firsthand. And I felt awful, sick to my stomach seeing him in pain like that. I did everything I could to be there for him—bringing him food and water when he refused to leave his bed, writing hispapers, waking in the middle of the night and holding him until he could breathe again—but it wasn’t enough.
For a few weeks after the funeral, I thought he was doing better. He was going to tennis practice, going to class. He’d stopped drinking and was seeing a new therapist. Though he was grieving, as he should’ve been, there seemed to be moments where the sadness would lift, and I thought that, eventually, he’d be okay.
But then one night in April, he didn’t come home. We’d planned to meet up, so I was waiting for him in his room. Instead, I found him outside his dorm at the bottom of the stairs, wasted, his face bruised and bloody like he’d gotten in a fight. He wouldn’t tell me what happened, and he wouldn’t let me take him to the student health center to get looked at.
That weekend, we argued about it.I can’t watch you do this to yourself.I was trying to get him to get help when the words slipped from my mouth—I love you—and I immediately regretted it. He blinked at me, stunned, and I could see he was shutting down.
I can’t do this,he said as he walked out the door.
